Russian press review

As the death toll from the siege of Beslan's Middle School Number One in North Ossetia reached more than 380 - nearly half of them children - Russia's press was united in its outrage.

Writing in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Lema Kasayev called for "no mercy" to be shown to the hostage-takers. "The terrorists call themselves shakhids [martyrs], fighters for the faith. As a Chechen, I can say that these subhumans have no faith or nationality." Krasnaya Zvezda's Sergei Bogdanov agreed: "Terrorists should receive ... the harshest punishment."

The online Gazeta.ru's Semyon Novoprudsky, however, said that Russian brutality in Chechnya should not be forgotten. "The terrorists who seized the school - are they bloody dogs? Of course. But what do you call those who kill and rape Chechen children?"

There was anger at the handling of the siege, particularly the storming of the school on Friday, which the government said was unplanned and in response to two explosions from within the building. "Too much was hidden from us," said Boris Berezovsky in Kommersant. "I am positive the storming was planned," he added. "In this country people are regarded as cattle."

Many commentators accused the government of keeping the Russian people in the dark. "If our government has learnt anything after Nord Ost [the 2002 Moscow theatre siege]," said Irina Petrovskaya in Izvestia, "it is to limit journalists ... give them very little information or no information at all."

Sergei Yurev in Komsomolskaya Pravda smelled an international conspiracy. The single message emanating from US and British coverage of the siege, he claimed, was that "Russia should leave the north Caucasus and international peacekeepers, or, in other words, the American military, will take the place of Russian military. Then there will be no terrorist acts."

The fact that not all the hostage-takers were Chechens - some were Ingush - provoked fears that the atrocity could lead to unrest across the north Caucasus. Hostilities between Ossetians and Ingush - who fought over a disputed border less than a decade ago - could be reignited: "[Friday's] bloody climax," wrote Gazeta's Ivan Perebrodov, "could lead to another spiral of communal strife."